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Is Bleak and Blue the new Green
(UK) I couldn't get to the Business in the Community's (BITC) Annual Conference (9 May 2006) annual conference this year—luckily a contact of mine could and kindly wrote this review for the Phatgnat log:
David Cameron, leader of the blue Conservative Party, and Larry Hirst Chief Executive of "Big Blue" IBM UK Ltd kicked off a down-beat Corporate Responsibility (CR) conference titled "The Reason for Vision". Ghandi said "be the change you wish to see in the world", this quote came at the end of the conference when it was rather too late to find the reason for the vision.
The audience was given a bleak vision of the future when BITC combined their annual conference with the announcement of the results of the "Companies that Count" 2006 Corporate Responsibility (CR) Index, published in conjunction with the Sunday Times 7th May. To be kind, it's difficult to be visionary when you're presenting a management tool—which is what the index is. Sadly only 131 companies reported suggesting that Britain's biggest business still do not take CR seriously.
Climate Change Unchanged
Climate change was cited in handout materials as the most pressing issue, but didn't get much coverage in the main part of the conference or the Sunday Times supplement. In the environment break-out group it was described by EDF the energy company as "a long term issue" (ed—!!!!).
Blue Headline Grabbing
Cameron's speech was full of sound-bites and obviously sent directly to all the papers who all had the headline item in today's news on his attitude to commercialisation and sexualisation—picking up on retailers who sell sexy underwear for the under 10's to the KGOY market category (kids growing older younger).
Cameron only mentioned climate change in his speech in relation to Tesco. When asked a question directly he replied that carbon trading was the answer (ed—so was the trip to Norway just a local election vote-grabbing photo opportunity?).
Top Takeaways
Innovation is the intersection of invention and insight. This country is famous for invention, not innovation.
The digital information revolution has changed everything—creating a huge shift for businesses in terms of their reputations. You can get damaged so quickly on the web—you can't stop a viral campaign—by the time the lawyers get their act together it's too late. Companies need to have a proactive record—a defensive position isn't good enough. Companies can take preventative action—they need to understand why a blogger holds a particular view.
An audience member encouraged us to see the film 'An Inconvenient Truth featuring Al Gore presenting on climate change, "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction".
Finally why so Blue?
BITC was blue because it recognised that the index needs to change—it is lagging behind what companies are doing, and what NGOs (non-governmental organisations) want. "We've learnt a lot in the last four years (of the index), but what difference does it all make?"
Julia Cleverdon, CEO of BITC said "the hope is that the global warming 'noise' will get businesses to get their heads around the problem to find the way forward". (ed—is "hope" the best we can "hope" for?)
Ed—Where was the urgency, excitement and enthusiasm for CR? Have my fears been realised and reporting has stifled innovation?
Contributed by Jane Slatter, CR Specialist, Soroptimists and CSR Chicks
Filed by DK on May 12 2006
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